Cooking is an artisan skill that is used to cook raw food for a number of reasons, including restoring life points and the temporary boosting of skill levels. There are many different types of food in RuneScape, each healing a certain amount of life points. However, as with all skills, players must reach certain levels to cook various types of foods. Cooking can often generate a small profit as many players are willing to purchase food already cooked, especially those who cannot actually prepare higher level foods. Cooking also has a larger variety of training options than any other skill.

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The current minimum requirement to be ranked (at approximately rank 1,206,248) on the hiscores for Cooking is level 15. As of 30 June 2017, there are 199,479 current members that have achieved level 99 in Cooking. There are 4,393 current members that have achieved level 120 in Cooking.

Cooking is known as one of the fastest skills to train in RuneScape, as players can cook in many different ways and have the option to buy their raw food items from the Grand Exchange.

Generally a player who is gathering their raw items will cook their food items on a local campfire created through the Firemaking skill near where they are gathering, or take the items they have obtained to a range and cook there. Ranges (which provide a lower burn rate) can be easily located and are labelled on the map using this icon. ()

There are other assorted things that a player can cook on, such as sulphur vents, permanent campfires as seen in NPC camps, or on iron Spits. It is important to note that only meat, fish and stew can be cooked on an open fire. Foods like bread, cake, and pie must be cooked on a proper range, Most of these food items will generate an error message if the player attempts to cook it improperly while others, such as raw potatoes, will simply all burn. Raw foods loosely related to the Hunter skill, such as raw beast meat, raw chompy, and rabbit, must be cooked on an iron spit.

To actually cook something, players have to "use" their raw food item on a range or a campfire. If they have more than one food item of the same kind in their inventory, a picture of the food item will appear in the dialogue box. The player can right click on the picture and select how much he/she wants to cook from the up/down icon on the upper-right corner. By default, you cook all the selected raw/uncooked item.

If this is your first time cooking follow these steps for maximum effect:

Cook on the Lumbridge range after completion of Cook's Assistant, as there is a bank directly upstairs and the range offers a lower burn rate than other ranges.

If you do not want to spend much money in this skill, you can kill cows and cook the raw meat on the range or a fire.

As players train Cooking, they will periodically and randomly fail to cook something properly. The result is a burnt version of the item that the player was attempting to cook. As an example, if a player tries to cook a raw shark and burns it they will obtain the item 'burnt shark.' The same holds true for items such as burnt cake, burnt meat, and burnt fish, where the item name holds the general form 'burnt [item].'

As you increase your Cooking level beyond what is required for that particular food, you will gradually burn less, as is made obvious by the logic of getting better at cooking. With many raw items, especially lower to mid level items, you will eventually stop burning some types of food entirely, but will often need an extensive amount of training to reach the appropriate zero-burn level. An example being raw monkfish, which is accessed at Cooking level 62 does not reach zero-burn until level 92, 30 levels higher. Other than increasing your Cooking level, there are several methods of decreasing the chance of burning.

Burnt food items are completely worthless, and cannot be sold on the Grand Exchange. They are tradeable, but retain their uselessness and the minimum trade value of 1gp each. An update to the shops system guaranteed that any item sold was worth at least 1 gold piece, so players can now offload their burnt food at the general store for 1 coin each, which is generally minuscule compared to the amount it can cost a player to purchase the raw food item.

As Cooking is the skill of turning food from raw to edible, and there is a very wide range of available food types in RuneScape, there are many items that players need in order to cook food. Depending on what you are cooking you will need a variety of items such as water or flour. Listed below are the cardinal cooking items which are used to make the most common types of food.

Members can obtain bird meat via hunting, and may prepare it on an iron spit. It should be noted, however, that raw bird meat is much more expensive than its cooked version as it is used in the creation of spirit terrorbird pouches.

Members can find rabbits on Miscellania, Isafdar, and Rellekka. They may be also be bought from charter ship shops. Roasted rabbits can only be made by first using an iron spit on the raw rabbit then cooking it on a fire (not compatible with a range).

Members can obtain raw chompy meat by killing chompy birds. Although often referred to as 'hunting chompies,' it is unrelated to the Hunter skill. Players must complete Big Chompy Bird Hunting to be able to 'hunt' these birds. Chompy meat can be both cooked on a fire and roasted on a spit.

Members can obtain raw jubbly meat by killing jubbly birds. Although often referred to as 'hunting jubblies,' it is unrelated to the Hunter skill. Players must complete Recipe for Disaster (Skrach Uglogwee) quest to be able to 'hunt' these birds. The meat is roasted on a spit once obtained.

Members can create great maki by combining raw great white shark and seaweed, after unlocking the sushi perk from the Aquarium. When eaten, alongside the healing, the player regains 1% of their prayer every two seconds for up to 5%. Players cannot eat a second great maki until the first one's prayer restore effect wears off.

Members can create great gunkan by combining raw great white shark and kelp, after unlocking the sushi perk from the Aquarium. When eaten, it heals 1500 life points instantly, and then continues to heal 150 life points per second for 9 seconds, for a total of 2850 life points.

Members can create rocktail by cooking a raw rocktail. Eating rocktail can boost your life points by up to 100 above maximum. This effect does not stack with the effect of saradomin brew or Oo'glog spa pools.

Members can create rocktail soup by combining a rocktail with spices after unlocking the recipe from the Player-owned port minigame. Eating rocktail soup can boost your life points by up to 15% above maximum. This effect does not stack with the effect of saradomin brew or Oo'glog spa pools.

A sub-type of meat, snails can only be cooked by Members. Raw snail meat is obtained by killing snails in the Mort Myre swamp and the neighbouring Haunted Woods, Near the village of Canifis in Morytania. There are more snails in the eastern and southern parts of the swamp than in the Haunted Forest, especially the area known as the winding path. Once a player has found a snail, simply kill it and take the meat for cooking. There is usually plenty of trees around the areas you find the snails you can use to quickly cut down and cook the snails, making them a great food when your out adventuring and need extra food.

Bread making is done by simply combining a pot of flour with either a jug of water or a bucket of water. When the someone does this, they will be prompted with the option to make several different types of dough. Select the desired type, then quantity, to make the actual dough. Not all types of dough are directly cook-able, but those that are can only be cooked on a range, not on a fire made via the Firemaking skill. Once cooked on the range, regular bread is complete. Other types of dough, such as pitta bread and pastry dough have further steps until completion.

Pies are a food that a player must eat in two bites. Similar to pizzas, a player will eat only half of the pie at once, and garner the full benefits related to the pie (a player does not need to eat the whole pie to gain relevant stat boosts). After eating the first half of the pie, the player will obtain the aptly named 'half-pie,' which, once consumed, will revert back to an empty pie dish. Pies allows more life point replenishing power to be crammed into less inventory space, and are often used to give players a bit more health per inventory. For example, when a player eats the first half a meat pie, they will gain 200 Life Points (LP). The other half will stay in the dish, which can be consumed later for an additional 200 LP. Stat boosting pies work the same way, however, the separate boosts do not stack.

To make pies, players firstly need to mix a Pot of flour and Water together and select make Pastry dough. Players then use the Pastry dough with an empty Pie dish, to create a Pie shell. It should be noted that as it is, pie shells are fairly valuable and well sought after. Once the player has obtained the pie shell, the player just needs to add the appropriate fillings to make the uncooked pie they are after which then needs to be cooked. Where the individual ingredients are edible, the player may add the pie shell, or part pie, to the ingredients to avoid accidentally eating them.

A pie may be cooked on a range as well as by the bake pie spell in the Lunar Spellbook with no chance of burning. Burnt pies need not be discarded as they can be emptied, and the pie dish can be reused. Once cooked, the pie is complete, but players should be aware that if they accidentally eat half of it, there is a very low chance of selling the resulting half-pie.

Redberries are the ingredient needed to make this pie. Redberries can be bought from Port Sarim's food store or from Beefy Bill north of Lumbridge, or they can be picked up from their respawns south of Varrock. Members can grow their own Redberry bushes through Farming. Due to an update, they now respawn in Draynor, for slightly added convenience.

This pie is members only. The ingredients are: 1 Compost, 1 Bucket of water (must be a bucket), and 1 Clay. It can be tossed at players when it is cooked. When tossed, the target loses half of his/her run energy.

The ingredient to make this pie is one cooking apple. Free players can find these within the cooking guild or buy them from other players. Members have a multitude more options, such as speciality shops or growing their own apples.

This pie is members only. It uses three ingredients: 1 Tomato, 1 Onion, and 1 Cabbage, to be added in that order. These items can be grown by players, or found around Lumbridge and Draynor Village. Each bite of this pie provides a temporary farming boost of +3.

This pie is members only. It uses three ingredients: 1 Cooked trout, 1 Cooked cod, and 1 Raw potato. The fish are obtained through the fishing skill, and potatoes can be grown or picked from various farms around Lumbridge and Draynor Village where they will respawn. Each bite of this pie provides a temporary fishing boost of +3.

This pie is members only. The ingredients for this pie are 3 cooked bacon. Raw bacon can be acquired by killing the pigs in Eli Bacon's cellar after completing Bringing Home the Bacon. This pie is devoured in only one bite, unlike other pies, and the dish is not returned.

This pie is members only. It uses three ingredients: 1 Strawberry, 1 Watermelon, and 1 Apple. These items are mainly produced via the farming skill. Apples have various places to be obtained at, see above. Each bite of this pie restores 10% of the players run energy and provides a temporary agility increase of +5.

To make stew, players will need a bowl and some cooked meat or cooked chicken. The bowl has to be filled with Water, from any water source other than a well. The potatoes or cooked meat can be added next, in any order. Gathering and cooking meat is discussed above. Potatoes are found in various locations, generally in the fields around Lumbridge and Draynor where they grow. Members have additional ways of obtaining potatoes, including the Farming skill and various shops, especially the grocery shops in the Grand Tree and Yanille. If a member is attempting to make curry, the curry leaves or spice must be added before cooking the stew. Once all the ingredients have been added to the bowl, cook the stew on a range or a fire.

This stew is members only. However, players need to complete Evil Dave's part of the Recipe for Disaster quest. To make this stew, players need to add several spices to a regular stew. Each spice affects a different set of skills, raising or lowering them, although certain spices show a correlation to the group of skills they change. For more information see Temporary Boosts.

This stew is members only. To make curry, players need to use either spice or add three curry leaves (grown using the farming skill) before cooking the stew. 'Spice' can be bought or stolen using the Thieving skill in Ardougne's market or bought from the Culinaromancer's Chest.

Pizza is a very popular food choice for players who regularly engage in combat, as they heal large amounts of Life points. Pizzas are a very famous choice for players training the Slayer skill not only because of the amount of life points they heal but because, like pies, they are consumed in two bites. Players can eat one half and save the other half for when it is needed, essentially stacking two food items in one inventory spot. To make a pizza, mix flour and water, selecting the pizza base dough type. Once you have the pizza base, add a Tomato and a Piece of Cheese to make a Plain Pizza. Both a tomato and a slice of cheese can be taken from Aggie the Witch's house in Draynor Village north of the bank; however, this method is very time consuming. It can also be obtained in the Bandit Camp (Wilderness). They can also be bought from the food store in Port Sarim and the Culinaromancer's Chest. After obtaining a plain pizza, the pizza must be baked. After baking, It is possible to add various toppings to the pizza, which is a popular money-making method despite offering relatively low experience for simply topping the pizza. Pizzas are very useful for skills such as agility where the player takes constant damage.

This pizza is made by adding Cooked Anchovies to the Plain Pizza after it has been baked. Anchovies can be gathered by fishing or can be purchased in bulk by trading. Cook the anchovies before adding them to the pizza if they are raw.

This pizza is members only. This pizza is made by adding pineapple chunks or rings to the plain pizza after it has been baked. Pineapple chunks or rings are made by using a knife on a pineapple and selecting the pineapple chunks or pineapple rings option. For information on where to obtain pineapples, see that article.

Cakes are mildly complicated to make, and use several items at once making their assembly rather slow. One slice of cake does not generate a large restoration on its own. Once complete, cakes are eaten in three bites. Eating one or two pieces of a cake will result in either a 2/3 cake or 1/3 cake. The 1/3 and 2/3 cake items cannot be used on one another to reassemble a full cake. The total value of the LP they restore is divided equally among the 3 parts. To actually make a cake, players need a pot of flour, an egg, a bucket of milk, and a cake tin. Eggs are found near the chicken coops around Lumbridge, while milk can be obtained by milking dairy cows into buckets. Dairy cows are found near the combat level 2 cows around Lumbridge, and also on a farm south of Falador, which also houses a churn. When all four items are present, using one on one of the others will combine all four into the cake tin at once. This must then be cooked on a range, and cannot be cooked on a fire. Please note that unlike pies the cake becomes separated from the cake tin when cooked, therefore players cannot cook a full inventory of 28 at once. 14 uncooked cakes will result in 14 cakes as well as 14 cake tins in your inventory. After being cooked, a Cake can be embellished with chocolate by using a Chocolate Bar, or Chocolate Dust to the cake.

To make the basic cake, mix a pot of flour, an egg and a bucket of milk together in a cake tin, which is done all at once. Then cook the cake by using it on a range, or Evil Dave's Mother's Stove. It can also be bought or stolen from the Cook in Ardougne market.

Potato toppings are a members-only type of food and greatly increase the amount which a potato heals. Toppings can all be eaten as is, but restore less than half of what the complete potato/topping combination would restore.

Use Gnome spice and garlic on a bowl. (Note: using garlic on an empty bowl results in a related item, but as it cannot actually be cooked, it has been omitted. Using gnome spice on this item results in spicy sauce.)

Use a cooked tuna with an empty bowl, then use a cooked sweetcorn with the bowl of Tuna. You will need a knife in your inventory or tool belt whilst you are adding the ingredients. Tuna and Corn does not need to be cooked, experience is gained during combination of ingredients.

Baked potatoes are available to everyone, however any baked potatoes with toppings are only available to members. To add the topping to a potato, a raw potato must be cooked. Once cooked, add a pat of butter to the baked potato. This makes a buttered potato. Add the topping of your choice to a buttered potato to make a very potent healing item. The tuna and sweetcorn potato is one of the 10 best food items in the game, healing 2125 life points in one bite. These items sell for a very high price, as they entail a large amount of work to create and heal so many life points. Note that experience here denotes total experience gained for making each item from the raw ingredients. For information on the experience gained at each step, see the respective item's page.

Dairy products can only be made on Members' worlds with a Dairy churn. A Dairy churn is found on the farm south of Falador, the cooking guild just south of the Grand Exchange and at several other locations. If a player is contemplating a major churning project, it is worth noting that churning is very slow work. Also, as the bucket and dairy item are both retained, all things made at the churn can only be made in sets of 14, along with 14 empty buckets. The buckets do get automatically dropped if the player's inventory is full, so 28 can be churned in one go, if the player does not mind the loss of the buckets.

Wine is made from a jug of water and a bunch of grapes. Grapes can be found in the Cooking guild, In the Phoenix Gang's hideout, as a common drop from Guards, or members can steal them from Fortunato's Fine Wine in Draynor Village at level 22 Thieving; members who have completed a portion of Recipe for Disaster can obtain grapes from the Culinaromancer's chest. Members cannot grow grapes with the Farming skill. Jugs can be found in a large variety of places, including a spawn point on the top floor of the Cooking Guild. Simply use grapes on the jug of water to make Unfermented Wine. Approximately ten seconds later, the wine will ferment and either be drinkable, or go bad. Wine gives 200 experience for a good jug, and none for a bad jug. If you make the maximum amount of jugs in one trip (14) successfully, you will get 2800 experience.

The only hot drink is nettle tea, which is members only. To make nettle tea, players need first a bowl of water. Next, nettles are needed. Nettles are located near the prison along the road between the Wizard's Tower and Draynor Village, south-east of the slayer master in Canifis, or next to the yew trees in Edgeville. It is important to note that nettles will hurt players when they pick them up unless they are wearing leather type gloves (decorative types of gloves do not work.) The nettles have to be used with the bowl of water to make nettle-water. The nettle-water next has to be boiled on a range to turn it into nettle tea. The tea can then be poured into an empty cup. Empty cups can be bought or stolen from the tea stall in Varrock or by speaking to Brother Galahad, located east of the coal trucks. Also, if a player wants to add milk to their tea, they can obtain some milk in a bucket and use it with the tea. Adding milk is optional and has no real benefits, an amusing reflection of real life.

Brewing involves the fermenting of raw ingredients into ales or cider. Brewing may be considered quite useful since most of the ales boost certain stats. This can also make a number of ales valuable. It is, however, quite a slow process and so is not a viable means of training. The products are not useful for healing unlike most areas of cooking. There are two types of brew that can be made - ales and cider.

To brew ales, you have to use the fermenting vats located in either of the breweries in either Keldagrim or Port Phasmatys. Each place has only one vat, in which one ale can be brewed at a time. To start brewing ale, 2 buckets of water, 2 lots of Barley malt, the main ale ingredient, and a pot of ale yeast must be added to the fermenting vat (in that order). The main ingredient is specific to the type of ale being brewed. Once the ale yeast is added, the ale will begin fermenting. This will usually take several days to brew. Once it is done brewing, you can turn the valve between the vat and the attached barrel to move brewed ale to the barrel, and then collect the ale in Beer glasses or calquat kegs. The barrel will produce 8 doses of the ale. Ale in calquat kegs are in most cases considerably more valuable.

To make cider, you should first take 16 apples and 4 buckets to the cider barrel at one of the breweries in either Keldagrim or Port Phasmatys. 4 cooking apples should be added to and mushed in the barrel. An empty bucket should then be used to collect it in a bucket. Once 4 buckets are filled, add them to the fermenting vat, then add ale yeast into the fermenting vat. It will then start fermenting.

During the brewing process, it is possible for an ale to mature instead of brewing normally, in which case your fermenting vat will produce mature versions of the ales you have brewed, which have stronger effects—it is also possible, however, for an ale to turn bad, in which case the ale in your fermenting vat will become unusable.

All of the brews boost a certain skill, as shown in the table below. Some of the brews have a variable boost amount which is relative to the players level, boosting more as the players level increases.

This ale heals the player instead of affecting stats. This ale's mature version heals 60 LP, and when gathered into a calquat keg this adds to 240 LP in one inventory slot. The rumour that this decreases strength is not true.

This ale's mature version is extremely valuable: Provides +1-5 Cooking and is a preferred alternative to spicy stew.Chef's delight works similar to the wizards mind bomb, providing a boost relative to the players level. Low level players will receive only a partial boost, while players with more experience will receive the full boost. (approximately level 60 for full boost)

Gnome cooking is very complicated, and is best left with its own specially dedicated guide. The gnome foods plays a big part in the Gnome Restaurant minigame, more detailed information can be found in article linked to above but following is a general guide for how a player can get acquainted with gnome cooking.

Although it is complex, somewhat expensive, and requires a wide variety of unusual ingredients, gnome cooking can provide a good avenue to advance cooking from around 10 up to about 30 in good speed. To obtain the cookbook with all the recipes for gnome foods, a player can go to The Grand Tree in the Gnome Stronghold and find the gnome called Aluft Gianne Sr . He is on the west side of the first level up of the grand tree and is dressed as a chef. Talk with him, and offer your assistance to him. He will take you on as a kind of apprentice and tell you some basics, give you the recipe book and a small set of the basic tools you need to create gnome dishes. He will assign you a succession of dishes to prepare. Once you have prepared the dish to his satisfaction he will ask you to make another, then another moving steadily up the chart of assorted gnome foods. If you are using this method to train your cooking up and get an assignment you do not have the correct level to prepare, then you simply need to train until you do. Use the shops and resources in the gnome stronghold to make more gnome foods if you wish, or cook other foods that you may have. For each dish the player can buy supplies from the shop run by a gnome called Hudo who is found by the cooking range nearby Gianne, but ever since the shop stock update this has been severely limited. Players going through the tutorial will start by making crunchies which can stored at a bank in The Grand Tree and later sold on the Grand Exchange. As your skill levels improve you will be able to make battas then eventually bowls. Once you have completed the training exercises he gives you, you can start the minigame, which has several useful rewards.

They will affect what a player can cook, provided there is something new to cook at or before that level.

Chef's delight is a type of beer made by players which temporarily increases Cooking level by 1-5 levels when drunk (5% of base cooking level + 1).

Chef's delight (m) does the same as a normal chef's delight but with an added boost of +1, making the boost 2 to 6.

Orange Spicy stew raises cooking level by up to 5 which does not stack with other boosts, but can also randomly have the opposite effect and lower it by 5, which does stack. This allows the possibility of completely draining your cooking level if one does not use recovery methods such as super restore potions or Blood drain scrolls.

Equipping a cooking cape boosts cooking from 99 to 100. However, this is redundant for purposes of reducing burn chance as players cannot burn food with the cape equipped anyway.

Due to a update on the 9 August2011, the cooking time for an inventory was slowed down by 5 ingame ticks.

Before Fishing was added in June 2001, the experience for cooking meat depended on the player's cooking level, namely, 25 + 1.75 * level.

Before pies were added in March 2001, the amount of healing provided by bread and meat (the only food available at the time) depended on the player's Cooking level.

Prior to the removal of random events, in one of Evil Bob's random events, players were teleported to ScapeRune and were forced to uncook fish. However, you did not lose Cooking experience in doing so. If you had cooked food in your inventory, and tried to uncook it, you will say," I need Uncooking skill of at least 70 to attempt that." Followed by "Wait, I don't even have an Uncooking skill."